The generalizations aren’t all right all the time, but they resonate, especially with the kids who end up recruited into this volunteer military. Unlike previous generations of troops – at least as such generations are venerated in books and movies– this one is, as Wright characterizes them, raised up to feel abandoned, frustrated, and angry. Lo’s been killed, visible agitated when they’re unable to get a sitrep from their lieutenant). They gripe to one another about everything from the weather to the military’s poor planning and wrongheaded orders (they also worry over rumors that J. More specifically, the men are most often competing for the benefit of their commanders. Members of Donald Rumsfeld’s lean, mean machine head into battle as if it’s a game, encouraged to compete with other units for “relevance.” Nathaniel Fick wrote his own memoir, One Bullet Away.) Like Wright’s book, the series is disjointed and disturbing, a story of youthful workers who are underprepared, underequipped, and underinformed. Based on Evan Wright’s 2004 book, much of it first published as a series in Rolling Stone, the seven-part miniseries is at once sprawling and detailed, a look at young Americans in appalling situations. The start of HBO’s Generation Kill lays out some essential points of focus: the Kuwaiti desert is hot, the firepower is awesome, and the kids in US uniforms are exactly that: kids with little experience in making life and death decisions. 50 cal fuck up a truck before,” he smiles. Gabriel Garza (Rey Valentin) pushes his square-framed glasses back on his nose: “I’ve never seen a. Fick (Stark Sands) calls in the team leaders for a “little after-action,” whereupon Cpl. And so it goes: as the men complete their exercise, preparing for the start of the Iraq war, Lt. And then, what might have been the ultimate question: “How’s it feel motherfucker? How’s it feel to be fucking dead?” The corpse stirs, not dead at all. The corpsman rushes to tend to a man down, only to be told it’s too late: “Don’t waste the morphine, Doc, my boy’s been smoked,” mutters a Marine, eyes squinting. “Get out of the kill zone!” barks a commander over the radio.Īnd then the Humvees stop, amid clouds of settling dust. Their vehicles rumble and pitch, their bodies bend beneath Kevlar and gear as a truck blows up and black smoke shoots over the horizon. The Marines of the First Recon Battalion are hauling ass across the desert. I was learning to accept that sometimes the only way to fight evil is with another evil, however good its aim. I hoped I’d done more right than wrong, hoped I hadn’t been cavalier with other peoples lives. There wasn’t any pride simply in being there. Before the “War on Terrorism” began, not a whole lot was expected of this generation other than the hope that those in it would squeak through high school without pulling too many more mass shootings in the manner of Columbine. Many are more on intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows, and Internet porn than they are with their own parents. More than half the guys in the platoon come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents. These young men represent what is more or less America’s first generation of disposable children.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |